


A Spark to Set the World Alight

by Umbrella_ella



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-03-01 20:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2787551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbrella_ella/pseuds/Umbrella_ella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the lines, things changed for Elizabeth Keen. That is to say, she changed. Maybe.</p><p>She's still trying to figure it all out. </p><p>[A collection of unrelated drabbles/oneshots/ficlets that center around Elizabeth Keen and the criminal mastermind, Raymond Reddington, some of which will be romantic in nature.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cabin Fever

**Author's Note:**

> This first bit was just supposed to be a first kiss sort of story. I don't know what happened. 
> 
> I don't own Blacklist, by the way. If I did, I'm sure it wouldn't be half as good as it really is.

Lips and teeth clash together, seeking each other out, and for a moment, it is not about who’s kissing who or who started it first.

It is the metallic tang of copper on his tongue and the smooth feel of the nape of his neck beneath chilly fingertips.

They don’t talk about it, they never have to, and this time is no different, except it is and he is here _but not for long because he has so much to explain and so little time_ and she is here _and she will always be here because that’s who she is_ and together, the two of them are a spark that threatens to blister the world and burn the earth, but they don’t care, not now. Not when his fingers are drifting beneath the hem of her shirt, and her tongue is touching his neck, seeking out the steady thrum of his pulse and he is humming in satisfaction as her lips ghost over day old stubble.

She pulls away, her eyes almost shining in the dim firelight of the cabin. There is no electricity here, no steady hum of power buzzing beneath their feet, and perhaps it makes the silence heavier, more static, in a heady way, and maybe it makes her think, _really think_ , about what she’s about to do. And she looks at him and sees the concern in his eyes belying the quirk of his lips, and she feels his hands go still, palms warm at her hips, fingertips warm on her belly, unmoving.

She makes her choice.

“It’s okay.”

He doesn’t answer, not in words, but he answers in the gentle press of his lips against hers, in the way he lets her map out the scars on his back with careful fingers, the way he lets her feel around the scars on his abdomen, and in the way he pulls her impossibly closer to him, hands ever wandering.

_Thank you._


	2. The Waiting Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Awful things happen to awful people. 
> 
> It just so happens that Raymond Reddington is not as awful as she once thought. And yeah, she thinks as she takes his smooth hand in hers, she's a little scared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your gracious responses to this! I'm new to the Blacklist and I can't seem to stop writing these two.

It's cold and dark, but in the artificial peace Liz finds beneath the fluorescent lights of the hospital, it is neither dark nor cold. 

She waits, paces, reads a few magazines, and paces some more. Dembe is by her side, fingers steepled in quiet contemplation. Perhaps he is praying. 

Liz can't remember what praying feels like.

She can't stop staring at the few dried flecks of blood, _his blood_ , that stain the collar of Dembe's jacket.

Somewhere between the hush of a hospital at two in the morning and the change of shifts, new nurses in clean, rumple-free scrubs, she remembers. Elizabeth Keen remembers what it felt like to be warm and safe and  _real_ with Red and she can't quite breathe for the thought of losing that. Somewhere behind her, Dembe shifts noisily in his seat, and she thinks that maybe it's not so much for himself, but for her, a reminder that someone else is here, that someone else  _cares._

Liz can still feel the glide of Red's hands-- smooth and sure-- on her back, in her hair, on her face, as if he were mapping her features, committing her to memory, like it was the last time they would be together like that, and not the first.

It was the last time she'd seen him.  

Later, when she's given up pacing, when she's tired of waiting and worrying and is trying to figure how exactly to find out what in the _hell_ is happening, the doctor comes out and tells her a thousand things she doesn't understand, and a thousand more she's not sure she wants to understand, not today. Not now.

"He's okay?"

Her voice is breathy and she feels winded, like she's run a marathon and suddenly, the dull ache in her body, the one where every bone aches and every breath is a process, is back, but she's not sure if it's from the hell of a day she's had, or from the flood of relief that courses through her veins as the doctor finally replies.

"He will be."

So then she finds herself steered by Dembe's gentle hands on her shoulders to his room, and she swallows thickly as she gathers the strength to face him like this.

Wires, IV drips, and monitors are attached to him, and the steady beep of the heart monitor is reassuring, despite the fact that she can feel Red's pulse flutter beneath her fingertips as she presses them to his wrist. The junction between palm and wrist is soft, small,  barely there, but she presses her fingers into it greedily, hoping that it will comfort him in an odd way.

Awful things happen to awful people. 

It just so happens that Raymond Reddington is not as awful as she once thought. And yeah, she thinks as she takes his smooth hand in hers, she's a little scared.

"We're okay," the murmur comes, unexpected.

Cloudy eyes look up at her and his skin is too pale, but it's okay, and maybe she cries a little when his fingers close around hers, but he doesn't see it. If he does, he doesn't mind. Red's voice, hoarse and lacking it's usual authority, is small as he tries to speak again. 

"We'll be okay," he says, and this time, she believes him. 


	3. Letting Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It ends as it began, with the two of them, and Liz making a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of the kudos and hits this story has already received. Special thanks to those who have bookmarked this or commented! It is much appreciated and very encouraging. 
> 
> I actually wrote this little thing on my blog the other day, so if you found this story through my blog, you may have already read this.

She takes a breath, maybe two. Short, shuddering gasps of air. The waver in her voice gives her away, he lifts his eyes, and the warmth in them nearly makes her fumble.

The words are strange, forced, they don’t fit, and her lips stretch and mold with the cadence of the syllables.

"Thank you. You saved me."

_I love you._

"I always will, Lizzie."

_I love you too._

He smiles then, a quirk of thin lips, and she wonders if he’s ever really smiled.

She decides she’d like to be around to see that someday, so she takes his outstretched hand in hers.

And that is how the story of Raymond Reddington and Elizabeth Keen ends.

Well, officially. Somewhere, in a small village where no one asks questions and everyone has secrets they do not wish to share, there is a man with burns on his back and too many secrets, and a woman who made it all worthwhile.


	4. Three Times Elizabeth Keen Did Not Trust a Criminal (and One Time She Did)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Odd who you choose to trust, or who you don't. Trust is weird like that. Canon compliant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This too was written on my blog. This is a few days old, but I wanted to post it here too, to make sure everyone could read it. 
> 
> Enjoy! (I'm sorry to be publishing these all at once, I just get overly excited and write a lot when I'm into something.)

i.

Tom patters around the kitchen, the pads of his fingers brushing her back in reassurance as he leans into her side, the knuckles of his left hand turning white from gripping his cane.

“Only a few more days of this thing, and we’ll be home free, Lizzie. Then maybe we can take a vacation somewhere, hmm?” Tom’s lips brush the shell of her ear, and Liz shudders, a hum of contentment reverberating through Tom’s chest at that as he drops his lips to her neck, stubble scraping the sensitive skin there.

She swallows carefully, hoping that the tremble in her voice will be interpreted as arousal instead of fear.

“Yeah, only a few more days.”

Elizabeth lets the cool water from the tap taper down her fingers, pooling at the drain as she reaches for another plate.

She tries not to think of the box beneath the floorboards of their dining room— thinking of it will only bring more questions, and more questions mean more uncertainty about Tom.

She isn’t quite ready to doubt her husband, but she certainly does not trust him.

ii.

The cool steel sinks into her shoulder, and the scream that tears its way from her lips is almost unholy, and between the quiet hum of the chemicals in the bath behind her, and the smooth croon of Nat King Cole’s dulcet tones, Elizabeth Keen screams and keeps screaming.

Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, there’s nothing. When she awakens, she runs as fast and as hard as she can, but the dog finds her first and so does Kornish. 

The second time she awakens, it is to the static quiet of no sound at all. It’s eerie and relieving all at once, and there he is, kneeling before her. Kind eyes stare into hers, and a hand lifts to her face, brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear, and she very nearly wishes she could sink back into sleep, to listen to the sound of Reddington’s voice as she drifts away, but his voice is cold when he leaves her, dangerous and low and predatory, and she feels sick when it all ends with the sizzle of chemicals and not a scream to be heard. She still cannot trust him. 

_You’re a monster._

_Yes._

_How can you live with that?_

_By saving your life._

The book he has handed her is heavy like a tome, and she feels the weight of it resting in her arms, and this burden is so very heavy, almost too heavy, but she clings to it as a drowning man might cling to a life raft, as if that alone might save her from the tide that threatens to pull her under.

iii.

It begins with a question.

“What happened, Lizzie?”

She knows he is there before he speaks, and she can’t help but lift her tearstained face to face to see him standing over her, his coat hanging limply over his forearm and his fedora clasped in his hand.

Before she knows it, her story about the photo, about Tom, about everything, is filling the silence between them, and as the silence fills, the heaviness in her heart abates.

 _You can trust me._ Four words, four short syllables, and she is breaking inside. She should trust him. She could make that choice. It would be so easy to fall into that trap, to trust him, to turn from one liar to another, but she doesn’t.

 _No, I can’t,_ she means to say, but she doesn’t. Her reply is tangled and knotted on her tongue, and the words are swallowed up, her throat tightening with the pain of her silence, as if the three words she wants to say are made of barbed wire and stone. Elizabeth feels them swell in the pit of her stomach, twisting and turning and making her feel nauseous, as if she is twelve again, looking down at the world from atop the Nebraska State Fair’s Ferris wheel, rickety and rusting bolts the only thing saving her from a free fall.

 So instead, she says _I needed you to be wrong about him,_ because conversations about trust and honesty and truth are not what she needs.

She needs the warmth of her husband, solid, reassuring, his breath on her neck in the early mornings, his mumblings of discontent as the sunlight filters through the slats of the blinds, and his quiet presence as he pressing his knee into hers beneath the kitchen table.

Raymond Reddington is not who she needs. But Raymond Reddington is all she has, for now, and he cannot be trusted, even as he grasps her hand in his own, even as she does not pull away from his touch.

iv.

The Post Office is dark, and the backup generator is running out of power; lights flicker and flash, and the dim red hue that lights the hallways makes it difficult to see where she is going, but the mercenary that holds her by the wrists is rough, cruel, and dangerous. So she stumbles blindly on.

Lizzie’s steps, labored and resistant, carry her to the box, where Ressler is lying on a metal bench inside, Reddington near him. She is forced to her knees as the criminal, shirt and hands stained with blood that is not his, looks on, a prisoner of his own making.

His eyes flicker briefly with terror, and she is aware suddenly of the liquid she kneels in, of the blood that is spattered across the glass of the box, and Elizabeth chances a glance to the left, bile rising in her throat as she realizes that it is Luli. She watches carefully as Red’s eyes widen with fear.

Lizzie nods then, hopes it’s enough, hopes he understands.

_It’s okay._

_I trust you._


	5. 1,587 Days (4 Years, 126 Days, 3 Hours, 56 Minutes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all ends exactly 1,587 days after it began. Or, more precisely, four years and one hundred and twenty-six days, three hours and fifty-six minutes after they met.

It all ends exactly 1,587 days after it began. Or, more precisely, four years and one hundred and twenty-six days, three hours and fifty-six minutes after they met.

_Please, don’t._

Elizabeth Keen regrets many things in her life, and chief among these many things are the choices she’s made in those 1,587 days, but never this, not him— she never regretted _loving_ him.

It had cost her what little she called a life, and she had gone willingly. Elizabeth Keen had been long dead, and an innumerable list of names, complete with passports—all with her face, of course (Red’s contact was good)— had taken what little she had left of herself and stamped out fake lives on pieces of paper that she signed quickly, her hand firm and her signatures resolute.

They’ve been in Paris too long, lingered here too long, and suddenly, with a twist in her belly, she knows that this will be the last she sees of him.

Red’s naked back is turned to her, and Lizzie fights the urge to ghost her fingertips across the mottled, grooved flesh that the burns have left in their wake. He stands suddenly, as if he was making to go to the bathroom, where he would continue his ritual of dressing, but he doesn’t.

They can’t afford to waste any time. Lizzie hears the clock, suddenly harsh in the heavy silence. Red’s eyes bore into hers, and she wonders if she’ll ever be able to memorize _that color_ because my God, he’s beautiful and imperfect and Christ, she loves him with her entire self, and she wants to shrink away, to collapse in on herself, but she can’t, won’t. Doesn’t. Instead, she rises, and helps him dress, fingers tapering gently across smooth skin, watching as Red watches her.

It’s the most intimate they’ve ever been. He is dressed too soon, and Red smiles one of his cocky, half-smiles, and for a brief moment, Lizzie wonders if he might be okay, if they might make it out. She wonders how far they could get if they ran right this second.

But nightmares do not shake easily, and they cannot outrun them.

Not this time.

His tie, impeccably knotted, and his blazer and vest, astoundingly immaculate, even with the dust the wind had kicked up outside on their walk back home, are things that bely the true nature of the man beneath, and as he moves in for one last embrace, Lizzie turns her face to smell him one last time, letting her lips ghost across smooth skin as she speaks aloud. Her nostrils cloy with the smell of him, of wine, rich, red, and deep, of sandalwood, and of her, of them, and she can’t let go.

“Please, don’t.”

Raymond’s eyes are alight with a false confident when he shifts to look at her, and he takes her arms from his neck delicately, as if she were a small child, clinging to a memory. She blinks back frustrated tears when she realizes that he is not crying.

“Lizzie, darling, did I ever tell you about the time I went home? Maine is beautiful in the autumn. The rich greys, the greens,” he pulls in a sigh, as if inhaling the scent of his home, “Sometimes I think I can still smell the ocean, just there, always just out of reach.”

She knows this is part of the game they play, the dance they perform, but she cannot help but cling tighter to his forearms as he shifts against her, eyes closed.

Lizzie shakes her head, even though a small part of her realizes dumbly that he cannot see her.

“I realized, when I saw my parents, when I saw the small house I grew up in, when they came running out to greet me, that it was the last time I would see them. There was a swing in the back, tied to an old oak tree, and the sunset was beautiful on those hills over the water— oh, Lizzie, if you could have seen it— and I swung on it, and I swung as hard as I could— I was too big for it, really, I was twenty, and my shoes scuffed the dirt, gouged the soil, and the rope snapped, and as I looked up, I realized I had missed the sunset. One more sunset, that’s all I ever wanted, but it wouldn’t be the same, not really, not without that swing there.”

Raymond takes a breath, and Elizabeth watches as his throat bobs. She can hear the click of his throat.

“Don’t miss the good things in life. Don’t get caught up in what you’ve lost. All things end, Lizzie, that is the nature of life and death, of birth and rebirth.”

She does. Lizzie pushes her lips to his greedily, tasting all of him, wanting more than he can give, and wanting him to stay. But they both know that Raymond is right.

It’s time.

Much too soon, he breaks away, a small, last kiss pressed to the corner of her lips, and Lizzie thinks she’ll remember this moment forever. Her husband, in all but name, walking to the gallows of his own fashioning, and she herself tightening the noose around his neck.

“Please, don’t.” His voice is low, gravelly, raw, a tone reserved for only her, and her eyes close when his breath is warm on her ear.

“Don’t what?”

“Regret living.”

She promises, and when she opens her eyes, Raymond Reddington is gone, his hat perched neatly on the bedpost.

The smell of sex lingers in the air.

She cries, and no one is there to hear her.

Five days later, she stands at the edge of a cliff, beneath an oak tree with a frayed, limp rope barely hanging from a tall limb. She waits, eyes tracing the dilapidated house in the distance, fingertips brushing the tall grass, and wonders if the water is as cool as it looks.

And of course, as in all things, Raymond Reddington was right.

The sunset is beautiful.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this piece in particular, simply because I'm not sure if I've done justice to the characters' voices. Let me know!


	6. Miserere mei, Deus (Have Mercy on me, O God)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He sees her in a crowded Cuban market exactly three years and two months after she died." Post-3B AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an exercise in dialogue for me, as I generally avoid it whenever possible. I'm also trying to get a knack for Raymond's voice here, because James Spader so often presents complex and layered meanings within Reddington's dialogue, and I want to try to work with those nuances he so readily gifts us with.

He sees her in a crowded Cuban market exactly three years and two months after she died.

Her hair is beautiful, almost red in the sunlight.

_Elizabeth._

Raymond Reddington is accustomed to seeing ghosts, after all, he specializes in hunting the dead and bringing them back to life, in a manner of speaking, to his advantage. There is a man in Barbados whom he keeps on retainer for just such a purpose.

But when he sees her, he’s leaning over to haggle with a vendor about his price on black market .45-caliber pistols, and he sees her. His breath catches in his throat, and he abandons his conversation in favor of watching Lizzie set a bag of mangoes in her basket, leaning down to talk to someone he can’t see. His heart is thundering, and for a moment, he tries to remember when the last time he’d indulged in opium, because it feels just like this.

She’s beautiful, he thinks, and her face lights up with a smile as she stretches out her arms to hoist a small child up onto her hip. He swallows.

_Agnes._

The little girl is grinning, her cherub cheeks pink and her blonde hair curling out from beneath her hat. Raymond feels his heart stutter, and his knees are weak.

The rush of blood is thundering in his ears, and his heartbeat quickens in the same way it had so long ago when she’d marched towards him so long ago, so young and so beautiful, her attempt at authority making him smile, even as he’d been chained to the chair. He wonders if she’d look at him like that again, now, even after everything they’ve been through, disgust and derision rolled into a blend of careful, even loathing.

She’s moving now, shifting through the crowd, and he panics. He can’t lose her now, not again.

His shoes are kicking up dust as he shifts and slides through the crowd of the market, but he doesn’t care. He stumbles over a cart, and pushes through a small family of four, and his vision is trained on her, on the way she moves seamlessly through the crowd, on the way her dark hair glints under the blue, cloudless sky, and he knows, he knows he’s seeing her, that she’s really here.

He sees her at the edge of the market, and Agnes has her small hands clasped around her neck as she hefts the basket with one arm and adjusts her daughter with the other. He’s but a few feet behind her, and she ducks around a corner, the thin street winding and turning, and Raymond reaches out to catch her.

She lurches at the unexpected brush of contact, and she turns, pulling away.

“Who—” she stops.

They stand in silence like that, Raymond’s hand stretched out, a fraction of an inch from her flesh, and Elizabeth Keen silent and staring. His chest is going to burst, the tickling burn of overexertion invading his lungs, making it hard to take in air, and his heart is pounding faster than he can count the beats.

“Raymond,” she breathes, blinking, her blue eyes still wide.

_Oh, Raymond, I do love…_

“You’re dead,” his voice is craggy, like the words have been caught in his throat for a long time, and even now, the phrase tastes like ash in his mouth. He runs his tongue over his teeth, desperate to get rid of the way the words make his mouth cotton-dry.

“According to everyone, Elizabeth Keen is dead, yes,” she replies coolly, and he’d forgotten how much he’d loved the sound of her voice, and it sounds better than Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, better than any Broadway show. His eyes fall shut for a moment, but he has to know, to make sure, that this is more than the best dream, so he opens them.

“Lizzie,” he swallows against the foreign way his mouth moves around the word, tasting it in his mouth after so long, “why?”

“I had to, Raymond,” she replies, and it’s clipped, short, and somehow that hurts more than seeing her in front of him.

“I don’t,” he pauses, staring at the way Agnes squirms in her arms, her fists closing around her mother’s hair, “I don’t understand.”

 _I will never lie to you._ Of course he understands, he understands more than anyone how toxic Raymond Reddington can be, how he destroys lives, be it with a smile or a bullet.

“I had to protect my child, Raymond.”

And _of course_ she had to, _of course_ Agnes is her priority; it’s only his own selfish ego that demands these answers, that wants to hold her close and never let her go again. Still, his reply is quick and sharp, and it’s selfish, really, because he wants to hurt her, even if it’s just a fraction of the pain she’d inflicted on him so long ago. His wound, this grief so far unabated, even after three years, has been torn wide open, the pain of it nearly unbearable.

“Of course, Elizabeth,” the formality of her full name, so long unused seems to shock her, and she blinks rapidly, “And how is Tom?”

Her face twists unpleasantly at the name, and a small grain of twisted pleasure settles in his stomach.

“He left us.”

Raymond isn’t sure he can hide his anger from Lizzie, so he turns his attentions to the child in Lizzie’s arms. Agnes is watching Raymond with interest, her hands moving to grip the brim of his hat.

“And the child? Agnes, how is she?” It’s as if they’re old friends, bumping into one another at the supermarket in a small town, and not a dead woman and a criminal. He grasps her hand, and _oh,_ it’s warm, and she’s here and she’s _alive_.

“Fine, she’s great,” Elizabeth turns to her daughter, tugging her hand from his grasp, and Raymond nearly falters, sighs with the loss of warmth, so quick to disappear, so like the day he’d said goodbye.

_Please, don’t go._

He says it again, and this time, she’s standing in front of him, pink-cheeked and breathing and he wants to time his heartbeat to hers, if only so he can listen to it for the rest of his life.

“Please, don’t go. Not again,” he swallows, “not now.”

She trembles, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, and she nods, brief, but firm, and Raymond feels his heart balloon.

“C’mon. I don’t like staying out for so long.” 

He nods, and takes her bag. He follows her to her villa, the streets of the city narrow and bustling. The heat of the summer day rises up from the cobbled roads, and Raymond peels his blazer away, instead draping it over his forearm.

When the door of her villa creaks open, Raymond is met with a beautiful view. Lizzie’s home is simple, white wicker furniture spread around the open floor plan, and French doors lead out on a balcony. Red sets the groceries on the counter and moves around the place, placing the food where he thinks she would have it.

He stops when he sees a photo of Lizzie and Agnes held in place on the fridge by a magnet, and the tempo of his heart increases again. A part of him still can’t believe it.

“She went down quickly today,” Lizzie says from the doorway of the kitchen, and Raymond startles, twisting away from the photograph of her and her daughter, watching as she pads across the stone tile of the open kitchen to take out two mugs. Lizzie sets them out on the counter with a clink and with a push of a button, the electric coffee machine gurgles to life.

“We should talk,” she leans on the counter, watching Raymond carefully.

“I thought that was what we were doing,” he replies, watching as her lips quirk up in a wry smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. She clearly isn’t in the mood for his quips, and he finds himself oddly happy about this.

“Tell me,” he continues, “was it before or after Agnes was born that you decided to… leave, Lizzie?”

Lizzie looks at the coffee pot, half-full and still brewing, and doesn’t look at him again.

“After. Mr. Kaplan came and… talked with Tom and I about how to hide ourselves, gave us everything we needed to live here,” she stops, pauses, takes a breath, and looks at him with pleading eyes.

He leans on the fridge, desperate to be propped up, to survive the seed of anger that plants in his belly. _Kate? Why? Of all people…_

“Tom left three months later— the domestic life, it just wasn’t for him,” Lizzie laughs, cold and high, and Raymond understands where the joke is, if only for a moment. “He left Agnes and I. I think he’s in France somewhere.”

Raymond wants nothing more than to close his hands around Tom Keen’s neck, to feel the last beat of his heart beneath his fingers, but instead, he smiles, a twitch of his lips. Lizzie looks at him then, her eyes blue and wide and vulnerable.

“I’m not sorry I left. Not really, but… I was doing what I had to. What I needed to— to protect my child. Surely some part of you understands that?”

This question rips him apart from the inside out, and he realizes that Elizabeth Keen knows more about him than he thought, about the chinks and fractures in his armor that no number of polishes and buffs would ever heal, and she’s found the soft spot in his hide, and she’s pushing, always pushing, as if to chip away at him until naught but his barest self is naked to the world, to _her_.

He desperately wants to run. He stays.

“I do,” he replies, and the answering silence yawns between them, impassable, and Raymond Reddington feels the weight of those three years and two months, and they’re the longest of his life.

Lizzie crosses the kitchen, her palm reaching out towards him, and he holds his breath, Lizzie’s touch feather-light and firm and warm and all of the things he remembers every second of every day.

“Have you ever almost drowned, Lizzie? Have you ever felt weightless? Drifting, unable to take a breath for fear of it being your last? I swam in the Caribbean once with an old associate who knew the islands, taught me the important things about life there, and it was all I could do not to drown in that ocean. You see, the undercurrent had swept me further out than I’d meant to go, and somewhere along the way, it was as if,” he pauses, watching her, assessing her, warm and careful, “it was as if I’d forgotten how to tread water, how to keep myself afloat. I thought I’d die then, I was so sure of it.”

They both know that he is not talking about an ocean, they both know that it’s about them, he and she, him and her and the child, the little girl that sleeps but feet away in the next room, and she understands what it is that she had done all those years ago, and he feels her palm cool on his cheek and she’s pulling him close, closer, and her heart is beating a staccato against his chest and she is _so alive_.

“I’m so sorry, Raymond, I—” she stops, pulling away, and for a moment, he fears she’ll run away again, and she seems to know this, and she loops her fingers together with his, “I need you to know. I need you to know what I wanted to say all those years ago, I need you to know that it’s still true.”

Raymond swallows, and he thinks then, of her last words, of _Oh, Raymond, I do love…_ and of  _Please, don't go,_ and he wants to recoil from her, to save himself from this clear and obvious pain, the largest chink in his armor yet.

“I do love you, Raymond,” his heart pounds, and he swallows, “You asked me so long ago, before Agnes, before Tom and I— you asked, and now, I’m answering, because it’s the least you deserve.”

Raymond thinks about how he very probably deserves far less than her love, how he deserves terrible, horrible things, how he taints her with his red-stained hands, but instead, he can only think about the way she’s looking at him, her eyes blue and beautiful and _so, so in love_ with him he wonders how he didn’t notice.

Their lips meet, much as they once did so long ago, and he wants to taste her forever.

She’s breathtaking, and he thinks he could stay here for the rest of his life, like this, with her and Agnes and mangoes and white wicker furniture. 

It could be worse, he decides.


End file.
